


jean jacket

by reythzii



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Pining, Short One Shot, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 14:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17768210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reythzii/pseuds/reythzii
Summary: I wrote this back in 2017 after Dennis' Double Life - I listened to Jean Jacket by the Summer Set and immediately cranked this out. It's a lot less impactful post s13 but it's the first fic (more of a drabble, really) I was proud of so it's getting posted anyway.





	jean jacket

Mac shrugged into his jacket. Worn, ripped denim embraced his body, the fabric too cold from disuse to mimic any kind of human touch. He held on to the edges of the jacket and sighed.

Dennis hated this jacket.

‘ _It makes you look like a bum_ ,’ he’d say, ‘ _or worse, a hick. Take it off_.’ Mac snorted in contempt. This jacket had memories sewn into it. The twin to Charlie’s, they’d started wearing them in high school when they thought that the fact that they skipped class and smoked weed together made them a gang. He’d cut the sleeves off, of course, but that still hadn’t changed Dennis’ opinion of it.

‘ _It’s not even a jacket anymore. Stop calling it that_.’

He supposed Dennis had a point. Though it had begun as a jacket, it was now a vest. Time had changed it, but Mac didn’t want to let go. His breath hitched; heart pounding in his chest. God damn, every time he did this to himself, every time he thought about this he just felt so alone. He turned his gaze to the pile of his own clothes on the floor in the corner of the living room of his ~~and Dennis’~~ apartment. He didn’t have a closet; not since he’d had the apartment rebuilt and his old room turned into an exercise room. And he couldn’t bring himself to move his clothes into Dennis’ closet -

Not when it was supposed to be _their_ closet, in _their_ room. It wasn’t even an empty closet. Dennis had still left pieces of himself in it, clothes that still smelled like him months (Christ, had it really been months already?) after he’d left. Clothes he’d been in too much of a rush to stuff into the bag he’d packed to take to North Dakota. The bag that had been Mac’s old gym bag, but was large enough and far enough out in the open that it was in the path of Hurricane Dennis and was one of the things he’d taken and dropped far away from the Philly apartment. In his haste, he’d grabbed some of Mac’s shirts too; the only ones he’d let himself acknowledge were missing were his beer shirt and, to his dismay, his riot shirt.

Dismay. That was the way he’d let the gang think he felt when they commented on him not having worn it for a while.

He didn’t know the words for what he felt. All he knew was that he wished his shirts were the same for Dennis that his were for himself. Things that still smelled like him, things that he could still see their owner in if he let his eyes blur enough.

Mac made his legs move towards the couch, and he sank down onto the worn cushions.

Worn cushions on a months-old couch?

That tends to happen when it’s used as a bed.

And when there’s not much to do after work except drink and sleep.

Mac grabbed a pillow from one end of ~~the couch~~ his bed and held it close. He remembered doing this while Dennis was sitting next to him, laughing at him while he hid his face from whatever horror movie Dennis had insisted on watching to break their _Predator_ streak. He remembered falling asleep with one inbetween them but waking up with it on the floor after an especially long night spent outside their rooms.

Memories. That’s what this ~~jacket~~ vest was. Memories of Dennis stealing Frank’s corvette and picking him up in the middle of the night; the engine roaring outside of his front door and his mother too drunk to care. Memories of driving around with the windows down and the summer wind whipping their hair into ridiculous shapes they wore like badges of honor. There was no one but them. No one to see, and no one to care. No one to judge.

That’s what Dennis had always hated.

The judgement.

The whispers and looks that he couldn’t control, chipping away at the marble statue of ~~Adonis~~ ~~Apollo~~ himself he was cocooned in. But when they were in that car, there were no eyes. No hands poised to strike and crack and break him, no voices to pollute his mind. Dennis didn’t really hate the jacket vest. He loved it, actually. He loved it when it was in the passenger’s seat of the corvette, at the bottom of a pile of the rest of their clothes. He loved the way it clung to his skin, slick with sweat and gleaming gold. He loved the way Mac looked at him when he had it on; Mac knew because he’d told him.

‘ _You make me wish we could stay like this forever, baby boy_.’

It always stayed in the car. Dennis, shirtless save for the vest and telling Mac about how damn scared he was to go back to college for the fall semester and be alone again. Mac, his chest hurting in a way it never had, in a way he told himself was because Dennis was his best friend - he looked at him and felt what he thought he should feel when he looked at those girls in the magazines Charlie would sneak into school. He thought that love was the same; that you could love your best friend ~~as much as~~ more than you loved a girl, any girl, because your best friend was special.

~~(He was right, goddamn was he right but it’d taken him so long to figure that out.)~~

Those nights spent in that car that summer were something he wished he could save in a bottle. In as many bottles as there were memories. The bottles wouldn’t be like the ones in a bar, the stuff inside them enough to get you to feel something for a few hours or a whole day if you were lucky. He’d keep those bottles from that summer

\- On a shelf

\- In a drawer

\- Underneath his bed

\- In a safe

Anywhere he could think of so he could pull them out and smell those memories; smell those nights in a hot car parked outside of the city and on the side of a road with nothing but trees for miles.

Smell them the way he’d stand amongst Dennis’ shirts and breathe him in. He’d taken his cologne with him, the vain bastard. All that was left was what still clung to the clothes he’d hung back up after fancy dinners or schemes requiring formal attire and didn’t want to spend money on drycleaning them.

Mac was so, so scared of the day he’d walk in there and the smell would be gone.

Scared of the day where he’d have to start wearing shirts with sleeves again, because that would be the only way he could feel close to Dennis then.

Months aren’t long. In the grand scheme of things months are the change in the pocket of your wallet, maybe a few of the ones that look so small next to tens and twenties.

But learning to live month-to-month without someone who used to give you year after year was the most difficult thing Mac ever had to do.

Mac’s chest felt heavy. It was heavy in the way that he knew that sleep would alleviate the pain, but it would be back again after he’d opened his eyes. It was the dull, throbbing pain that had settled deep into his core the moment he’d stepped into the apartment without Dennis and realized that this was the way it was always going to be.

This was the way it was now.

And Mac didn’t hate it. He didn’t have it in him to hate it. Not when that was what he had to tell the gang at first, then sweep it under the table after they’d moved on.

He just wished it was how it was then, in Frank’s old corvette on a hot summer night.

Him and Dennis, ~~alone~~ ~~escaped~~ ~~free~~ together.

Dennis and him, ~~roommates~~ ~~friends~~ ~~best friends~~ so much more.

Dennis, sweaty and golden, shirtless and in Mac’s jean ~~vest~~ jacket.

Mac, happy.


End file.
